The old 2011 notes on Lagoa Salgada30 Nov 2017 17:29
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“THE IBERIAN PYRITE BELT is one of the most outstanding Eu- ropean ore provinces, hosting one of the largest concentra- tions of massive sulfides in the Earth’s crust; it contains more than 1,600 million metric tons (Mt) of massive sulfide ore and about 250 Mt of stockwork ore (Oliveira et al., 2005, 2006; Tornos, 2006). The Iberian Pyrite Belt hosts more than 90 massive sulfide deposits. The dimensions of the deposits vary from 1 to >300 Mt (e.g., Neves Corvo, Rio Tinto, and Aljus- trel), including 14 world-class (>32 Mt) volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) orebodies (Laznicka, 1999). Despite their large size (eight deposits with >100 Mt massive sulfides), most are particularly pyrite rich and only 11 deposits can be considered large with regard to their Cu-Zn-Pb contents. Ten deposits are located in Portugal where currently only Neves Corvo and Aljustrel are being exploited.
Rare trace metals, such as In, Ga, Ge, and Se that are used in high-tech applications and now critical to the continued survival of the industries producing equipment for renewable energy generation and LCDs, are clearly moving to the fore- front of the mining companies’ concerns because these met- als are often present in the traditional smelter concentrates produced in the mines within the Iberian Pyrite Belt (de Oliveira et al., 2007).
Neves Corvo, a giant in terms of Cu content and supergiant with respect to Sn tonnage, has well- documented occurrences of In (Benzaazoua et al., 2003) that is included in the Cu concentrates sent to smelters.
Because of the occurrence of In in Neves Corvo, the eval- uation of other Iberian Pyrite Belt deposits was launched. Fu- ture forecast scenarios of limited supply (e.g., Reiser et al., 2009a, b) further attest to the importance of understanding the geochemical and mineralogical distribution of In within the ores of the Iberian Pyrite Belt. This paper presents the re- sults obtained in the smaller and less well known Lagoa Sal- gada orebody, located approximately 80 km northwest of Neves Corvo, that was discovered in 1992 under Tertiary sed- iments of the Sado basin after detection of a Bouguer and a magnetic anomaly (Oliveira et al., 1998). Despite ongoing ex- ploration, the orebody is still not fully understood.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fernanda_Guimaraes2/publication/234023645_The_Lagoa_Salgada_Orebody_Iberian_Pyrite_Belt_Portugal/links/004635371df4d1b3e5000000/The-Lagoa-Salgada-Orebody-Iberian-Pyrite-Belt-Portugal.pdf